So anyway, I was watching professional wrestling. And I notice for the first time, how fantastic it is. Many of us scoff at such entertainment, writing it off as “fake”. And it is fake. In the same sense that the theatre, and movies, and television, are fake. It’s acting. A performance. Complete with a script (at least a rough one), characters, make up, and costumes. What’s real is the athleticism, the training, the choreography. I want to compare it to ice dancing, but in a theatre of violence rather than love, with more fully developed characters, and with much more audience participation. It’s a modern-day circus.
It has the spectacular athletic feats: I watched as one character lifted the other character up, legs pointed straight up in the air, in a kind of dance of violence, and then dropped her from full height to the mat. There was no denying the strength and cooperation and practice it took for the two of them to pull that off. All while acting out this script of hatred toward each other.
It has comedy: the characters throw each other out of the ring and, much to the delight of the audience, find ordinary objects with which to pummel each other.
It has daredevil antics: the character stands on top of the ring ropes, jumps, and flies halfway across the ring, grabbing her opponent midair, kicks her legs out, and both fall to the mat with a bounce and, somehow, no broken bones.
I don’t know how I’ve never seen all this before. Perhaps I had been watching more riveting masterclasses. Or perhaps today’s reframing can be attributed to National Optimist Day. Because that’s what happened to me today, isn’t it: my perspective on WWE was reframed. And it feels kind of nice to have positive feelings about something that is consistently playing on the TV in the mornings. Now, to re-frame the musical selection and volume…